


death, but not for you

by foundCarcosa



Category: Dragon Age II, Dragon Age: Origins
Genre: Gen, Multi, Orsino Lives, Post-Blight
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-12-08
Updated: 2013-12-08
Packaged: 2018-01-04 02:15:46
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1075348
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/foundCarcosa/pseuds/foundCarcosa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>The two Wardens find a mysterious refugee in the forest, the Champion and her dwarf come in search of him, and all realise their stories have begun anew.</p>
            </blockquote>





	death, but not for you

"Why are we even still here?" Alistair muttered, hacking at the unruly underbrush with a small axe and batting away whining mosquitoes with his free hand. "In Ferelden? We should be in… oh, I don’t know…"

"Antiva?" Anansi Surana supplied, mopping sweat from his brow. "Rivain? A lot hotter there than it is here, you know."

Alistair stopped short, and Anansi nearly ran into him.  
"I know," he said sourly, stripping out of his damp tunic and pushing back the strands of golden hair that had escaped his messy ponytail. "Still, we could at least be _indoors.”_

"We’re still Grey Wardens. Plus, Keeper Zathrian gave us aid. We’re not going to let his clan get eaten by Blight wolves, are we?"

"It’s the middle of the day! Can’t we kill them after sundown?"

"You want to be in the Brecilian Forest after sundown." Anansi snorted, although he did look longingly back towards the Passage where the carriage awaited.

"Well, no." No one wanted to be in the Forest after sundown; Blight wolves weren’t the only dangers to prowl the cursed lands, and it was better to be able to see one’s enemy coming in the light of day.

"Come on. We’ll just… you know, set up some traps, lay down some wards, and call it a day. Easy."

Alistair was rigging up a particularly gnarly trap and Anansi was working on a semi-permanent glyph when they heard the shout.

"Did you hear—" Alistair started, but was quickly silenced at the sound of another, more pained shout — and a growl.

Anansi’s staff seemed to leap into his hand as he shot to his feet and started to run, Alistair hot on his heels. He called up a quick, hot fireball and held it steady as he ran, until the hulking, spiny form of the Blight wolf came into view.

He fired. Alistair charged after it, the fireball exploding against the creature seconds before he launched into it with the enchanted short-sword he always carried. Anansi had a fleeting, self-indulgent second with which to admire the warrior’s well-toned torso as he struck and wrestled the creature, and then he heard a man’s agonised groan.

"Get him out of here!" Alistair yelled, and Anansi darted forward to haul the assailed out of harm’s way — a grey-haired, too-thin elf in what looked like the most hodgepodge set of commoner’s clothing he’d ever seen.

"Come on," he hissed as the Blight wolf let out one last howl and fell, taking Alistair with it, and with a strength of will that Anansi hadn’t been expecting, the other elf grabbed hold of Anansi and let himself be dragged away.

==

In the balmy shade of the covered carriage, the strange elf groaned and sweated under Anansi’s healing magic as Sten, their designated driver, kept his eye on the forest in case more dangers awaited them.

"That was some wolf," Alistair puffed out as he joined them, wiping his face with his tunic, which had apparently been repurposed as a sweatrag.

"You’re just out of shape," Anansi snorted, to which Alistair made a rude gesture and sat down with a grateful sigh.

"So how’s our rescue mission going?"

"The worst of the mauling’s fixed," Anansi reported, as his patient took a shuddering breath, "but he’s got some other wounds, too. Looks like he’d been running from something."

"Isn’t everyone," Alistair snorted. "Who is he, any idea?"

"Thought he was one of Zathrian’s, but now I’m not so sure." Anansi nodded to the amulet that had slipped out from under the man’s tattered shirt; a masterful piece, of decidedly Formari make.  
Alistair whistled lowly.

"Apostate, then?" The warrior’s voice was hushed, as if templars were skulking the forest at that very moment. "Kind of up-there in age to be going rogue now, don’t you think?"

"Shut up and let me heal him, and I imagine we’ll find out soon enough."

==

As the sun began its descent, Sten pointed the carriage towards a small village outside of Gwaren, where they’d been sheltered and provisioned in the past.  
Full of Anansi’s magic, their charge did not awaken until they’d rode into the village, the stars already starting to wink into being.

"Where am I?" he whispered, in a voice like nails scraping a whetstone.

"Not sure this place even has a name," Alistair responded breezily, stepping down from the carriage. "Come on, let’s get him into the inn."

==

"So, uh. How’d you end up in the Forest, anyway?" Alistair asked, slouched in an armchair in the corner with a hunk of cheese and a heel of bread, while Anansi mopped the elf’s brow and ran his diagnostic fingers over the nearly-healed injuries.

The elf’s large eyes clouded over, and Anansi felt his pulse quicken.

_“Kirkwall…”_

==

_There was blood everywhere, all over the floor, all over him, and none of it was his. Perhaps it should have been._

_"More templars are coming!" Jezebel Hawke shouted, and for a moment he could only think,_ There is blood in her hair.  
She should not have been brought into this.

_"We have to fight!" She was looking at him expectantly, gemstone eyes sharpened and glittering, crossbow in hand. He’d never seen her fight, not like this, not physically.  
He did not wish to watch her lose, to ruthless and maddened men and women who did not care for her, or him, or the dead mages and apprentices at his feet._

_"We will lose," he whispered, barely heard over the sounds of battle outside the Circle doors — doors that were now rattling as the templars began to force their way in._

_Tears blurred his vision and despair crushed his will, but Jezebel had other ideas. She called her warriors, the lyrium-augmented elf, and her brother who had defiantly covered the Chantry sigil on his templar armour with a bloody handprint. As they rushed forward, she signalled to Varric, the merchant prince._

_"Go!" she shouted, as chaos exploded around them._

==

 _"Kirkwall?"_ Anansi repeated, his hands stilling. “What about Kirkwall? Is that where you’re from?”  
On the other side of the room, Alistair sat up straight.

"Dead. All dead… my fault…  
I should… I should have stayed…”

==

_"Go!" she shouted, and Varric strapped his crossbow to his back and waved at Orsino to follow him._

_"I don’t understand," he murmured, but the dwarf was having none of it._

_"If you don’t follow me, you’ll die!"_

_Behind them, people were already dying, but Orsino ran after him, tripping over lifeless limbs and slipping on puddles of blackening blood, through the halls of the ruined Circle, halls that could have been sanctuary but were instead prisons._

_He’d wanted, so badly, to be the one to fix things.  
All he’d had to offer were words, and words were nothing against steel._

_Varric Tethras opened the doors to the courtyard, where a sickly sun was trying to shine through the clouds of smoke and Chantry debris._

_"Go on. Get out of here. We’ll take care of Meredith."_

_"No," he protested, backing away, horror bleeding into his features. "No, I can’t leave. I am First Enchanter of this Circle—"_

_"There_ is _no more Circle, First Enchanter. Get out of here.”_

_"I deserve—"_

_"You do not deserve to_ die! _Get_ out _of here! Hawke’s orders!”_

_And because he couldn’t say no to Jezebel Hawke, because even he knew he did no one any good dead, because some small part of him still wanted to make things right before he stepped into the Fade for the last time…_

_…Orsino ran._

==

"I wanted to… jump off the ship. Finish the job. Die.  
But I couldn’t. Because I am a coward…”

Alistair snorted derisively. “Trust me, it takes _balls_ to kill yourself.”

Anansi shushed him distractedly, his eyes fixed on the older elf’s face, on the horror he saw flickering through his eyes.

"You were in the Circle when the Chantry was bombed," he realised quietly; news travelled like wildfire in the port cities, and Gwaren was abuzz with the news.

"I was supposed to _protect_ the Circle," the man moaned, and Anansi’s chest tightened at the sorrow in his voice. "Now I have lost everything. It is better than I deserve."

Anansi drew in a slow, astonished breath. Now the amulet, the grey hair, the fine skin under the Fereldan dirt and encrusted blood all made sense. Being Irving’s ‘pet’ had made him privy to many an old man’s fond storytelling, about magic and life and… the meetings in Cumberland…

"First Enchanter Orsino…?"

"You should have let the wolf kill me."

==

Jezebel Hawke and Varric Tethras stood on the docks like lost children, Varric still green around the gills from seasickness but recovering quickly, Jezebel fighting the constant urge to look back over her shoulder.  
 _You can’t see Kirkwall from here anymore,_ she reminded herself harshly. _Just… the smoke._

Gwaren was bustling under the hazy afternoon sun, and to the shellshocked refugees, it seemed like an insurmountable task to even find a bite to eat in this mayhem.  
They stood, swaying a bit, and looked around with slow-moving eyes.

"Should find an inn," Varric said at last.

"Yeah," Jez agreed.

They stood there for a few more minutes before their feet remembered to move.

==

In the inn they heard rumours, most of which were too close to the truth for them to stomach listening to. But then there was one that made Jezebel’s stomach do backflips—

"Didja see that one fella? The old guy, with the nice robes?"

"Oh yeah, Harold sold him some old rags and a jug of wine for that ring on his finger."

"That ring had to be worth more than Old Man Black’s farm, I tell you!"

"No way…"

"Think I’m kiddin’? You seen Harold today at all? No, right? Betcha the next round he got him a fat purse for that ring."

Varric listened, too, but he couldn’t be sure of what he was hearing until—

"Circle robes, they looked like. He woulda stuck out less if he’d just taken them off and thrown ‘em overboard before he even hit land. Just come inta town stark-naked. Woulda got him less attention, _no_ one wants to look twice at a wrinkly old man…”

Amidst the raucous laughter, Varric and Jezebel looked at each other.

"Think I’d better put this silver tongue of mine to some use," Varric said, finishing his ale and getting up.

==

When Jezebel and Varric walked into the village outside Gwaren, Sten was checking on the horses in preparation for the ride back to Denerim, and Anansi and Alistair were bullying Orsino into spooning a hearty broth into his mouth.

"Come on, you have to eat. Irving would kill me if he knew I let the First En—"

"Don’t call me that," Orsino pleaded. "Please don’t."

"Well, he’d still kill me."

Jezebel saw him as soon as she stepped into the shady inn. She sagged in relief, barely noticing Varric’s supportive hand on the small of her back.  
"We did something right," she whispered, tears of relief and gratitude pricking at the corners of her eyes.

Orsino looked up at the same time Alistair and Anansi did. As Orsino’s eyes locked on the woman — the woman he’d begun to mourn, now here and very much alive — the other two men felt the world tilt, just the slightest bit. Enough for them to know that their destinies had shifted, and now not only were they part of the Tale of the Fifth Blight, but they were now part of the Tale of the Champion, and the prologue of the Tale of the Mage-Templar War.

"See? We should have left Ferelden while we had the chance," Alistair would say, later, as they pointed the carriage towards the Fereldan Circle of Magi, but they all knew he didn’t mean that at all.


End file.
